The World's Greatest Super Friends
The World's Greatest Super Friends
| 22 September 1979 (USA)
SEASON & EPISODES
  • 1
  • Reviews
    GamerTab That was an excellent one.
    SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped
    Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
    Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
    voicemaster71 I was in the second grade when the World's Greatest SuperFriends kicked off the Saturday morning lineup. I loved the intro and originally, this was an hour long show and it was followed up by another Super Hero variety series starring Plastic Man. Unfortunately, in terms of new episodes, Hanna Barbera only made 8 new ones. I guess to compensate, they blended them in with reruns of the All New SuperFriends Hour of 1977 replacing some of the 30 minute episodes of that year with these new shows. My favorites consist of the premiere episode: Rub Three Times For Disaster, Lex Luthor Strikes Back which has nods to the Superman movie, and the Space Knights of Camelon. These shows mostly were inspired by books of great literature, like Aladdin, King Arthur and the Kights of the Round Table, the Hobbit, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Frankenstein, and the Wizard of Oz. And Mr. Mxyzptlk returns at the end of the season, just like he did before. I didn't care for the Lord of Middle Earth, but I did love the Universe of Evil with the SuperFriends evil counterparts. The only problem I had with the last three episodes were absentee SuperFriends. However, it's interesting to meet the Kandorians from the Bottle City of Kandor in Terror at 20,000 Fathoms, and we actually get to see Robin go from sidekick to super powered Super Hero in SuperFriends Meet Frankenstein. Although this series doesn't meet up to the likes of its predecessor, Challenge of the SuperFriends, this is still a memorable series.Since the IMDb has no page for this one, I have to comment on what followed. From 1980 to 1983, the SuperFriends had episodes that were 7 minutes in length. These are the 80's shorts. The 1980 segments ran with reruns in a show called the SuperFriends Hour. These new shorts were combined with 30 minute reruns. Then they made a shorter set of shorts in 1981 and SuperFriends became a half hour show from then on. That year, they introduced as Hispanic Super Hero named El Dorado, who I thought was real cool. They made one more set in 1983, but wouldn't you know it, they didn't air here in America because ABC chose to replace the SuperFriends with pathetic shows like the Monchichis, Rubik the Amazing Cube, and the Littles. It wouldn't be until the 1990's when we would finally see these lost episodes on the butchered and edited Superman/Batman Adventures syndication package that has been running on USA, Cartoon Network, and now Boomerang. Some of these lost episodes are real good, but some others are quite dreadful. I strongly feel that following the World's Greatest SuperFriends series, the show went downhill. But I think it got better when it tied in with the Super Powers lineup of the mid 80's.
    Charlie Untz One of my favorite episodes during this era was the Universe of Evil and I wish they had written a sequel for it to pit the SuperFriends against the Super-Enemies. Would be great to see a sequel. I was a little boy when this episode came out and am now buying some of the Superfriends DVD seasons on DVD. The episode shows Superman being switched with his alternate reality twin and is forced to escape from evil twin duplicates of his Superfriends allies and is forced to turn to a scientist for help. Wish This would happen in Smallville (sort of)and it did sort of when Lex was split in two in last season's "Onyx". I also wish the Superfriends was still being produced.
    comic207 What I remember most about this series was "bitter disappointment." The extended members of the JLA (Flash, Green Lantern, etc.) were all but gone, leaving the main team of Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman with the Wonder Twins and that damn Gleek! I was getting bored. Most of the episodes involved darker menaces, but they made up one-dimensional throwaway villains that I couldn't care less about.There were a couple of bright moments, such as the one where the SuperFriends powers were stolen for a Super-Frankenstein Monster. To stop him, the remaining portion of the heroes energies were transferred into Robin, who used it to single-handedly defeat the monster and save his comrades. This was great because it finally featured Robin as more of a sidekick dependent on Batman, which was the way he had been portrayed in the comics for years. There was another which introduced the mirror universe, with the evil Super Enemies. But did they have to add the mustaches and eyepatches like if they didn't wear them they couldn't possibly be evil? ;)All in all, I avoid this series most of the time.
    Op_Prime They had a great thing with Challenge of the Super Friends. Though this show had some interesting stories, this show was not nearly as creative as the Challenge show. Some of the shows were stale and campy and was not able to capture the sense of creativity and adventure Challenge did. It was kind of a let down.